2 Taliban groups claim CIA bombing

WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

ALISSA J. RUBIN, NEW YORK TIMES

Published
6:30 am CST, Friday, January 1, 2010

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN — Both Afghan and Pakistani Taliban groups claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing this week that killed eight Americans — seven of them CIA officers — suggesting that the attack was viewed as a success and could be used to gain recruits and financial support.

The competing claims, made Thursday and Friday, did little to clarify the circumstances of the attack, as each group offered a different account of how the CIA base in Khost province, in southeastern Afghanistan, had been infiltrated on Wednesday.

The Afghan Taliban said the suicide bomber was a disillusioned Afghan National Army soldier, supporting accounts from NATO officials that the attacker was wearing a uniform over his suicide vest.

The Pakistani Taliban said the attacker was someone the CIA had recruited to work with them, who then offered the militants his services as a double agent.

The CIA and other American officials have offered few details publicly about the attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman, about three miles southeast of Khost city, the provincial capital.

The bombing, which claimed the base's chief among its victims, was the most devastating for the CIA since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which have placed the intelligence agency at the front line of the U.S. efforts in the region to battle the Taliban and root out its allies in al-Qaida.

Khost province borders Pakistan's tribal areas, a stronghold of both the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, which share the same language and Pashtun heritage.

Both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban rely in part on funding from foreign donors. Attacks that kill members of the international coalition prompt donors to believe that their support is buying results and to send more money.

“As long as the Taliban is perceived as winning, there's a large extremist community out there that will send money to the poor, so to speak,” said a NATO official with knowledge of Taliban tactics.